Just a few of the ideas that this seminal text brought to the fore:
- The Marketplace of Ideas
- The Harm Principle
- Utilitarianism as the moral mechanism of social policy
One of my all-time favorite pieces of political philosophy. I wish more people (not just philosophers or political scientists) took the time to read it. Also consider checking out Hobbes' Leviathan[1] and Rousseau's On the Social Contract[2].
> Utilitarianism as the moral mechanism of social policy
Is this a quotation? A phrase from a particular work? Could you share the context?
I do not accept that utilitarianism is "the" moral mechanism of social policy. Yes, many economists use utility maximization in their analyses, but there is a diversity of thought around many things, such as (but not limited to):
(a) what should utility include;
(b) the functional form of utility (the sum/average? the minimum? something else?); and
(c) to what extent reductionist theories of happiness/contentment/whatever are useful tools given that humans exist interdependently, with biological, tribal, social, and intellectual connections.
There is a whole field of thought that digs into these variations.
> Yes, many economists use utility maximization in their analyses
This has nothing to do with economists; the Western legal system is (more or less) based on the weighing of different interests (definitionally: utilitarianism). There are, of course, a few exceptions -- which graze deontology, and even rarer still virtue ethics and (more historically) some divine command theory -- but overall, I'd say that yeah, we're pretty much utilitarian.
> There is a whole field of thought that digs into these variations.
> This has nothing to do with economists; the Western legal system is (more or less) based on the weighing of different interests (definitionally: utilitarianism). There are, of course, a few exceptions -- which graze deontology, and even rarer still virtue ethics and (more historically) some divine command theory -- but overall, I'd say that yeah, we're pretty much utilitarian.
Would you recommend an essay or book chapter that elaborates a bit on this assessment?
Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America said it quite well:
"Democratic laws generally tend to promote the welfare of the greatest possible number; for they emanate from the majority of the citizens, who are subject to error, but who cannot have an interest opposed to their own advantage."
This is, by definition, utilitarianism (greatest amount of good, least amount of bad, and all that).
That's a great quote, but I'd suggest it is mistaken in its last clause. Citizens, including the majority, can and have indeed held interests opposed to their own advantage. This has happened in the past and continues to occur. I'd suggest this is precisely because they "are subject to error" - a fact which few powers have failed to exploit.
I totally agree, and the most obvious example is Julius Caesar (of course!). A charitable interpretation, though, would push us to look at the "average case" (us engineers often solely look at the extremes), where Tocqueville I think has a point.
Let's start here: I don't know what you mean by "moral mechanism" when you say "Utilitarianism as the moral mechanism of social policy".
I'm pretty sure you don't mean "moral mechanism" as used in this article: Davenport, D. Moral Mechanisms. Philos. Technol. 27, 47–60 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0147-2
Regarding de Tocqueville:
> "Democratic laws generally tend to promote the welfare of the greatest possible number; for they emanate from the majority of the citizens, who are subject to error, but who cannot have an interest opposed to their own advantage."
I understand the central argument of the quote. However, I don't think it demonstrates a strong enough connection between utilitarianism and social policy to call it "the" moral mechanism, granting of course, I'm not exactly sure what you mean (see above), but I am thinking it is along the lines of "moral influence" or "moral foundation".
Also, the claim that citizens cannot have an interest opposed to their own advantage is, at least, overly simplistic. Yes, de Tocqueville qualifies it with "Democratic laws tend", but I don't think this is enough of a caveat. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he didn't didn't do an empirical study of legislation nor did he attempt to categorize the effects in a utilitarian framework.
So my responses to dT's claim: First, preference aggregation is non-obvious at best and quite controversial in practice. Second, we have to talk about time scales. Some policies are intended to have long-term benefits with short-term costs, for example. Third, those with political power have the ability to use it in ways that disadvantage others. How often this happens would require a proper research design, which (correct me if I'm wrong) dT did not do. I view his work as valuable but largely as a record of his observations while travelling. He was certainly not a neutral observer.
I'll add a different point: given the phrase "Utilitarianism as the moral mechanism of social policy", do you view it as a metaphor? In what sense are you using it -- trying to identify patterns through history?
When I read philosophy, I actively seek to contextualize it. For example, I ask:
(a) Are the terms clear (admitting it can take work to get the context);
(b) Is it a way of thinking about the world (i.e. a reframing)?;
(c) Does it offer explanatory power?;
(d) Does it offer predictive power?
Another way to capture these four questions is: "To what degree is a particular clear, coherent, and/or interpretable by others? How does it assist in thinking about the issue? Is it testable in some way, not necessarily through a strict scientific method?"
Hopefully this background gives you some context as to why I'm digging into this phrase. For the sake of argument, let me say (and let you respond) that all four lettered questions are hazy to me.
Ok, now a few remarks about the United States and its social policies over time:
In the US, I'd like to highlight some contributing factors to "how we got here" with regards to social policy: (1) the historical moment; namely, perceived injustice by the colonies inflicted by the British; (2) the influence of common law on US legal foundations; (3) the innovation, so to speak, of the US form of government; (4) a long, complex history of social policy in the US, which includes religious influences, shifting awareness and beliefs, a civil war, mobilization of voters, and ensuing legislation, waves of resistance to change, and so on.
“Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens should be made in the utmost degree to converge.”
—John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1861
I just finished Rousseau's Social Contract and Discourses, and I really recommend reading the Discourses as they paint a harrowing picture of how any government -- including democracies -- can become bent to a particular will and therefore lose its Sovereign mandate: it will sound very much like the modern USA. Whether that is true is best left for another time.
I'm currently reading the book's predecessor, John Locke's works Second Treatise and On Toleration.
I think one thing that is very important to these books on liberties that is missed is finding one with a good introduction that can put it in it's historical (read: dated) place. It is too easy to otherwise miss that Locke is not exactly anti-slavery, for example. Or that the "family debate" and role of the patriarchal family, that left the suffrage of women in doubt, was not addressed. Or that the whole struggle for their times was really a question of how to morally justify rule by people versus rule by monarch (and your suggestion of Hobbes' Leviathan is actually arguing for the monarchy, on the other side of the debate). And this debate was otherwise taken within the cultural context of "Wealthy, Man, Head of household", which may be wrong on all 4 counts today (the culture itself is changing, the discussion is no longer limited to the wealthy, men, nor head-of-household family units).
The "monarchy vs people" debate of their time is not an argument we are exactly having in real life. And what I've found by reading the works of this area is: just as fans of this kind of liberty love to out the onus on the "other side" that they need to consider these points, the fans of this kind of liberty really have an onus on them to need to continue the discussion and update it for the modern world: as I move from Plato to Locke to Rousseau their writing really do faithfully build off one another and so it should be possible today in 2020, and modern writers like Haidt (whose works I have also spent time reading) do not meet this bar, I feel.
Without this, simply reading these authors and saying "see, America, read this and be convinced" keeps giving everyone the burden of catching up on the 300-ish years of criticism of these works and discards those intraveneing years' political philosophy debates. A major setback, in my opinion, as I may have the time and willpower to earnestly become a read person of political philosophy, but that is certainly a luxury of a wealthy individual like me (and the founding fathers of the time) and not everyone can afford that (and economic disparity is also a key factor addressed by people such as Rousseau).
[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm
[2] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46333/46333-h/46333-h.htm